I believe the worst culprits in the decline of the written word are -specifically- hand-held readers and blogs. The concept of the hand-held reader is genius (and I can't be too critical - I own one myself) but the accessibility and convenience at such a miniscule price did to writing what outsourcing has done to other fields - it "cheapened" it and destroyed its career potential.

Blogs are much the same. Pay no mind to writing standards, vocabulary, style, etc.  Even those concepts have become obsolete. Now any person with a computer can write columns, articles, editorials and make it visible to the entire world. All those writing forms will  be unceremoniously lumped together and labeled with the almost derrogatory word "blog". Writing has been cheapened and made common. The catch 22 is that blogs allow for the expression of free speech - and what's more free when virtually EVERYONE is able to write now?

Forgive my rambling. My point is simply that writing has gone the way of every profession - cheaper, faster, easier to access. Akin to being outsourced.